Austria/Hungary

The forecast for this trip was rain, rain, and more rain. Now, I’m finding that it doesn’t really matter how determined you are to have a good time despite the circumstances—nothing is fun in the rain. Such was the case, unfortunately, with Salzburg. The city was a bit of a let down overall, but I really think that had more to do with the rain than anything else. It also didn’t really help that I somewhat overestimated my ability to sleep on the overnight train in my condition... Becka slept fine, but being on the top bunk made me nervous, and I also don’t handle hard mattresses as well as I used to. Our stop in the morning was not the terminal stop, so I set an alarm to make sure we’d have time to get up and ready—it turned out this was unnecessary, since they brought breakfast in at like 6:30 (our stop was at 7:30). So we ate, and I went to the tiny little train bathroom to change (Becka slept in her clothes), and when I got back, suddenly we were at Munich station—early!! Rebecca had very astutely gathered all our things and was ready to run out the door, but the door was closing right as we got to it! ...and then it turned out the train wouldn’t be leaving the station until its scheduled time of 7:30, haha. We felt a little silly, but I was impressed with Rebecca’s resourcefulness nonetheless. 

We had to catch another train to Salzburg, and we got in at about 11, dropped our things off at the hostel, and headed into town! Salzburg is quite a bit smaller than I was expecting. The Sound of Music makes it look like a sprawling metropolis, lol, but all the touristy stuff is in an area basically the equivalent of like a small town... We stopped first at St Peter’s monastery. It’s a filming location for The Sound of Music, I couldn’t tell you which part, because none of it looked familiar, but the church had to be one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It reminded me a little of Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, since it was painted in an almost porcelain style, but I think St Peter’s does it better. There’s also a beautiful cemetery in the back, and “catacombs,” which sound more exciting than they ended up being—basically a couple of caves in the side of the cliff it’s nestled into. 

We had lunch at an Italian place, haha, Becka’s choice. Then we headed over to the Horse Pond, which was actually pretty neat. It’s a big fountain with a horse statue and a bunch of murals of horses around the outside. We also went to an overlook where you could see all of Salzburg, which was in fact a neat view. Then... we went back to the hostel. It was only about 3, but our nap break in Brussels had been so successful, and I was thinking we would want to spend at least a good half day at Mirabell Palace, so it didn’t make sense to tack it onto the end of the day. I also thought maybe we’d venture out after a nap.

I was mistaken on several counts. We were just too tired, and I think it started raining again, so we just called it a night and hung out, watching shows on Becka’s phone. I was also mistaken about Mirabell Palace. Turns out there’s really not much there—that’s probably why it’s free to visit. What is there is beautiful, but it was raining pretty hard when we went out in the morning, which made the gardens (kind of the main attraction) more difficult to enjoy. Also, we found out that there’s a violin concert in the marble hall we could have tried to go to if we’d known about it the day before, which felt like kind of a bummer to miss once we saw the hall. But the parts that are available to see—the marble hall and staircase leading up to it—are very beautiful. I’m consistently amazed at the amount of statuary a single building can contain. It just seems like so much work goes into a single sculpture, to see dozens or even hundreds of them as simply decoration is kind of mind blowing. The garden was very pretty, and we doggedly wandered around. This time it was my feet that got wet—I mistakenly thought my boots would be more waterproof than my tennis shoes, but I was wrong. Fortunately, my sister, paranoid after her traumatic experiences in Spain, insisted on bringing an extra pair of shoes—I gave her a hard time about it, since we’re essentially backpacking, but I was grateful to have dry feet as we set off for... Vienna!

This was not a planned stop, but since it was raining in Salzburg and we felt like we’d pretty much covered what we wanted to see there, we decided to make an impromptu stop! It made me pretty glad that the train is tried to schedule from Salzburg to Budapest ahead of time didn't work out—the payment was rejected for some reason so I just left it to deal with later, because it gave us the flexibility to visit an extra city! (Vienna is literally en route between those cities.) I also finally tried some actual German food—a wurst (aka sausage) croissant. Not bad.

Our dad had previously mentioned a Versailles-like palace in Vienna, and we’d told him it wasn’t on the agenda, but it did sound interesting, and it turned out to be the closest tourist site to the central train station, so we decided to give it a shot. Belvedere Palace is essentially an art museum now, but there’s still enough palace left to it to appreciate for its beauty, as well. Becka basically fell in love instantly. I think she’s decided to move in, haha. It truly is a gorgeous place. Also covered in statuary, and halls adorned with gold and marble and chandeliers and mirrors. And the gardens are marvelous—there are some beautiful fountains, and it’s all laid out in classical Baroque style, but best of all... the sun was shining! I was so, so happy to see sunshine, seriously. It made going to Vienna seem like a great idea. I also got a(nother) good nap on the train, which completed my recovery from the overnight train. 

So we ended up getting to Budapest earlier than I’d initially planned for, which was good because it took much longer to get to our hostel than I’d anticipated, probably because one of the subway stations didn’t seem to be in service. I’d had hopes of maybe getting out to Fisherman’s Bastion to see the city all lit up, since we were earlier than expected, but by the time we got in, it was like 9:30 and we still needed dinner. Our hostel had this voucher for a three course meal at a traditional Hungarian restaurant nearby, so we took them up on it. The food wasn’t bad—a little hit and miss, and the courses were so heavy they were hard to finish, but my tarragon chicken came with this jasmine rice/spinach risotto thing that was to die for. Chocolate, here, though, tastes a little weird, so the desserts were kind of interesting. Oh, also, this was our first time dealing with a currency other than euros, and it was definitely disorienting, haha. I figured the ATM would have some standard amount offered that was reasonable, and I withdrew 60,000 HUF (the smallest number on the main page) before realizing that was like, over $200. So we just paid for everything in cash for a while... 

Now, all that being said, when we got out today, Budapest was absolutely everything I hoped/expected/imagined. It is such an incredibly gorgeous city!! (It was mostly sunny today as well, thank goodness—I’ve never been so grateful for a disproven weather forecast.) We started the day by taking the metro out to our farthest sights, Heroes Square and the Szechenyi bath house, which are up in the north end of Pest (Budapest is technically two cities) and relatively far from all the rest. We sort of decided to splurge on massages at the bath house... I figured it cost about as much as any of the other tours we’ve done, and it was a unique experience—plus it got us access to see some of the interior of the bath house, which is basically a bunch of public pools, saunas, and hot tubs, but in a very beautiful building. I was too pregnant for the regular lying face down, so my masseuse had me sit on a stool and lean up against the table. She also had me smell the oil beforehand just in case I was sensitive to smell. I really haven’t been at all my whole pregnancy, oddly enough, and the cinnamon orange massage oil smelled delicious. :) It also was super worth the amount of goodwill it generated with Rebecca, haha, who’s not always as gung-ho about running around seeing all the things as I am. ;)

After the spa, we rode the metro back down to St Stephen’s Basilica. I said before that the church at the monastery in Salzburg was the most beautiful I’d ever seen—it was very quickly eclipsed by St Stephen’s. My first thought walking in was an awed, *There’s so much gold...* Absolutely every surface was gilded, and it was stunning. But more than that, I actually really loved some of the iconography. Instead of Christ on the cross at the head of the altar, they had a pure white statue of Him dressed as the pope, with a spotlight shining on it, and it just struck me as so much more the way I, and Mormons, I think, picture Christ. And there were several beautiful paintings—my favorite was of Mary and the child Jesus accepting gifts from (ostensibly?) one of the wise men—and an enormous organ. Rebecca asked me why there was such an elaborate church in a country that’s so unimportant on today’s world stage, and it reminded me that Hungary used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire, making this basilica probably second only to Rome in its prime. 

We saw a sign on the corner as we exited the metro for a Cat Cafe just a block away from St Stephen’s, so we went there for lunch. It’s literally a cafe with cats wandering around! They’re pretty well trained, actually, and they must know they’re not allowed on the table, because no matter how hard we tried, none of them would come near while we were sat there. But we ate and then stayed after to play for a few minutes. It was really fun! 

We then walked across the bridge to Buda, and I absolutely could not get over how stunning the river bank is in that part of the city. With the royal palace ahead, the parliament building to our right, St Stephen’s behind, and the river flowing beneath... Breathtaking. Also, they have a funicular, which is basically like a vertical trolley, to take you up from the river bank to the palace (also the level of Fisherman’s Bastion). It was so neat! It sort of thought about raining on us as we explored around the exterior of the palace, but every time we put on our ponchos, it would immediately dry right up. The royal palace is where Katy Perry filmed her music video for Firework, which I pulled out to watch with Rebecca this morning to get her amped up for the day. It also has beautiful views of the river bank.

Around this time, I remembered that Gellért hill was on my list... except the only way to get to it was to go back down. We probably should have done Fisherman’s Bastion first as long as we were already up there, but I was still hoping to catch that a little closer to dark (the view is less impressive from Gellért). We got to ride the funicular again, though, which is always fun. Gellért hill seemed to be mostly a nature hike—we didn’t really explore too much of the park, just climbed up to the arches and statue, but it was a neat little climb, and there was a gorgeous waterfall, as well.

We finally made our way over to Fisherman’s Bastion, which is a verrry cool place. It’s basically just a bunch of turrets lined up across the top of the hill, and there’s also a church next to it. The church had closed by the time we got there, and we had realized by now that our overnight train back to Germany was leaving too soon after sunset to stay for the city lights, so we didn’t spend a ton of time up there, but it was still very cool, and you have a perfect view of the parliament building, which is also stunning. I think that’s the word I would use to describe everything in Budapest—stunning. My only regret is not getting to see the riverbank at night, but as Matthew likes to say, “Leave something undone so you have something new to see when you come back.” I would say Budapest has joined Cairo and Pisa on my favorite cities list, so I’m certain I’ll be back one day. :D